Salary
Average Salary: $37,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $1,544,676
For the absolutely crazy schedule you are going to be working, it's not incredible pay. You could earn as little as $20,000 a year and as much as $60,000 (source). You will not be salaried, so say goodbye to dental insurance and casual drop-in doctor visits because nice teeth and getting checked out are reserved for people like the guy with the Porsche that won't start.
It's either going to be an hourly pay of about $17.00 an hour (with the inevitable overtime, which is time and a half for the extra hours you put in) or you'll work off commission.
Either way, you'll be working full-time with lots of evenings and weekends in order to make ends meet. And you'll be working even more if your goal is to be totally rolling in the dough. If you have a family, you may need to have them hired at your shop in order to get some real quality time in. Unless, of course, you join the NASCAR Pit Crew and make up to $310,000 a year. But the competition for that job is so fierce, Tyra Banks won't even go near it (source).
In short, the amount of money you make is completely based on how hard you are willing to work—unless you are one of the lucky fifteen who work for NASCAR. Now we finally know why Mike down at the auto shop is always making up problems and extra charges for our car when we go in for an oil change...that dude is definitely working off commission.
